


Like a Storm in the Desert

by ryuutora



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura doesn't understand your Earth memes, Angst, Country Music, Hurt/Comfort, It's gonna be a major theme later, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Langst, Lots of Music, M/M, Major Illness, Medium Burn, Memes, Paladins being doofuses, So we're laying the groundwork now, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-09-15 12:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16933152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuutora/pseuds/ryuutora
Summary: Lance's journey to discovering that he, maybe, unironically likes country music, helped along by his big, dumb crush on Keith.Keith's journey in attempting to figure out what to do about his big, dumb crush on Lance, thwarted by the rise of some seriously unfortunate circumstances.





	1. Country Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Hey yeah so the goal for this fic is that Keith has cancer but it isn't the whole focus if that makes sense. So the first couple chapters are really just the squad being themselves, but just a fair warning about the cancer thing, because this is going to get all feelsy later on.
> 
> For now, have some memes.
> 
> P.S. Do Americans use the word keener? I'm beginning to suspect that they don't. I'm sorry if you're an American; good luck.

* * *

 

 

“What’re you singing?” Keith asks, gaze never straying from the task at hand. Pidge has them repurposing circuitry on ancient tech (well, ancient by Altean standards). The tiny soldering gun hums away and Lance has been wondering for over an hour if he isn’t wearing his safety glasses because he’s ‘too cool’ for proper protective gear or if he’s genuinely forgotten that they’re on his head.

“Huh?” he says dumbly. The tiny piece of metal he was just holding with the tweezers slips away.

“The -- you’ve been singing the same song under your breath for like half an hour.” _Now_ Keith looks up at him, equal parts exasperation and curiosity.

Here Lance had thought he’d just been playing it in his own head this whole time. Whoops. “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean to sing it out loud,” he admits, scooping up the piece of the board he’s working on and maneuvering it into place.

The soldering gun doesn’t start up again and Lance realizes Keith is still staring at him.

“You look constipated.”

Keith ducks his head, ears red. “Whatever.”

They work in silence for several minutes, then Keith says softly, “You can keep singing, y’know.”

Lance isn’t sure what to do with that. Well, besides listen, because he really does like singing. But Keith sounds, for lack of a better word, _shy_ about his request. “Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Why do you want me to sing?”

Keith gets that constipated look on his face again and it makes Lance smile widely. “Because … because it sounds good, or whatever. It was fine. I just wanted to know what the song was called. You can keep going.”

“Oh, Keith, are you _complimenting_ me?” Lance whispers, fluttering his eyelashes dramatically.

At this, Keith splutters helplessly for several seconds, looking off to the side. “I -- _sure_ , yeah, you have a nice voice. I like that song, and I’m bored out of my mind. So I’m telling you I don’t mind if you sing. Happy?”

“Oh, _very_.” Passing the panel he’s been repairing to Keith, who has a small pile of equipment in need of welding on the floor beside him, Lance starts singing again. He only gets about halfway through the song before something occurs to him. “Hey, Keith?”

“Hm?”

“What kind of music do you like?”

The soldering gun clicks off again and Lance watches him expectantly as he seems to cycle through multiple thought processes. Confusion, prominently, and eventually caution. He regards Lance openly for a long while, jaw working, then finally seems to come to some kind of decision. “I mean, when I was a teenager I used to listen to like, underground rap. I didn’t _love_ it, it was more something I listened to so I could fit in better with my fr-- with the people I spent time with.”

“So, what do you actually like?” Lance is leaning forward, even though he shouldn’t feel so much anticipation for something as simple as music.

Keith stares some more, and Lance is just on the verge of becoming uncomfortable when he shrugs and says, “My dad used to listen to John Denver. Like, a _lot_. There were other things he liked, but he really specifically liked John Denver, because he _told_ me all the time what a great artist he was.”

That’s about as straightforward as the last answer. “Well, was _that_ the music you liked?” Seriously, how hard is it to develop a music taste?

“Yeah,” Keith says quietly, and Lance is surprised to find he’s smiling to himself.

John Denver, huh? Lance swears he knows that name. He can’t figure out quite why it’s familiar, but Keith is so busy reminiscing he doesn’t bother to ask. He’s definitely heard-- “Oh my god!”

“What?” Keith is looking at him sharply.

“ _John Denver_. Like, ‘country roads, take me home’, like John Denver like--”

“Yes, Lance, that John Denver. Who else is there?”

“Like _country music_.” He slams his hands down on the floor so hard that Keith’s pile of equipment topples over, eyes alight with glee.

Keith sighs. “Yes, Lance, my dad grew up in Texas.”

Lance makes some kind of noise that’s pretty much the vocal equivalent of an aneurysm and starts laughing raucously.

“It’s … it’s really not that funny.”

He’s laughing so hard he thinks he might _throw up,_ but he manages to calm himself long enough to wheeze, “The most … the emo badass just … I expected literally anything but--” and then he’s laughing so hard tears are leaking from his eyes and Hunk’s head pokes into the room, concern obvious in the prominent wrinkle in his forehead.

“Is everything okay?”

“Hunk!” Lance screeches, vaulting to his feet and grabbing his friend’s arm. He takes several deep breaths, then points at Keith. “Country roads,” he says, like that explains _anything_.

“Um, what?”

“ _Country roooaaads, take me hooome,_ ” Lance belts suddenly, “ _to the plaaace, I belooong._ ”

It seems to click with Hunk, or at least something does, because he slings an arm over Lance’s shoulders and joins in, “ _West Virginiaaa, mountain mamaaa. Take me hooome, country roooaaads_.”

He and Lance dissolve into a fit of laughter so fierce they’re heaving, and Hunk eventually wipes his eyes and says, “I’m all for whatever is going on, but can you explain why we’re making fun of Keith and country music?”

“Hunk,” Lance squeaks, gesturing rapidly at Keith, who is still sitting on the floor watching whatever the fuck is happening with a blank expression. “ _Hunk_ , buddy.”

And then Hunk gasps and it’s all over. “Ohhh my god. Seriously? Are you for real?”

Lance nods and the laughter starts up again, sending them toppling over onto the floor. Lance is _literally_ beating his fist on the tiles as he howls.

“I am so confused,” Keith says softly. He shakes his head and fixes the stack of circuitry and other odds and ends he’s expected to be repairing.

“Keith, you like country music?” Hunk asks, much too loud.

Keith sighs, again. “I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. Why aren’t we making fun of Lance for singing sad Spanish songs while we act as Pidge’s personal servants?”

“Not just country music, specifically the ‘country roads’ guy,” Lance points out, just as Hunk starts saying, “You are the _last_ person I’d expect that from.”

“My dad grew up in Texas,” Keith says, _again_. It’s a fair defense, he thinks, but he also feels like even if he’d grown up in Alaska or something he’d still listen to the same music. “And I _do_ like other artists.” He turns his attention to Lance, who is standing up and helping Hunk to his feet.

Lance just puffs up proudly and asks, with too much hope in his voice, “Other _country_ artists.”

“Okay, I’m leaving. You can finish this stuff.” He tosses the soldering gun in Lance’s general direction and makes a break for it while Hunk and Lance are too busy trying to remember how to stand up.

“No, wait, Keith, I’m sorryyyyyy,” Lance whines, lunging after him as he ducks through the doorway behind them. He’s just a split second too late, and Keith is off down the corridor. It would probably be weird if he chased after him, and one look from Hunk confirms that. “Aw, man. Do you think I actually pissed him off?”

“I think he’s embarrassed,” Hunk tries, then shrugs. “Give him a couple minutes. We might have to apologize.”

 

They don't end up apologizing, but Keith shows up to breakfast and he smiles while Hunk and Lance have a ‘terrible dad joke’ contest, so he has to assume all is forgiven.

But Lance goes to Pidge between breakfast and the usual team training Keith schedules every morning, because he can't just let this go -- what kind of friend would he be if he did? Pidge, being Pidge, does in fact have everything anyone could possibly want on a laptop with a seemingly impossible amount of storage. This includes virtually every available genre of music, including some obscure shit Lance has never heard of and weird alien music she's managed to convert to mp3 files.

Of course, she has exactly what Lance is looking for. He could ask her for a tutorial video on how to perform an appendectomy on himself in a daycare storage room with only Barbie dolls for supplies, and she'd have it saved somewhere. Say what you might about Pidge (potentially at the expense of your life, considering the wildly overprotective gaggle of brother-figures), but the kid came _prepared_.

“Is there a specific reason you need me to do this or are you just bored out of your mind with space travel and need to revert back to good old-fashioned Earth memes for entertainment?”

“Oh, haven't you heard?” Lance says sweetly, a positively lupine grin stretching his cheeks. Pidge looks rightfully wary at this, fingers freezing over her keyboard.

“Heard what?”

“Mr. Grumpy Mullet likes country music.” Pidge’s expression barely flickers. Lance presses on. “Like, unironically. Like, he will genuinely enjoy it if I do this.”

Pidge still doesn't seem as excited about this as him. His grin falls away. “Lance,” she starts, squinting at him and stroking her chin pensively, “you will also genuinely enjoy it.”

That...can't be true, and Lance immediately wants to argue but he realizes that technically she's _right_. “Well, I mean, I will but only because it's funny,” he tries.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don't think it's a good song,” Pidge demands, which leaves Lance at a complete loss, partly because he doesn't think he can and partly because _wait a minute_.

“Are you saying _you_ unironically like it?”

“I have ears, Lance, of course I like it. Why else would it be in my library?”

“I mean … I don't-- I don't know what is going on. This started with memes,” Lance whispers, aware of how lost he sounds.

Pidge grabs a cord, and the surprisingly functional mp3 player Lance has a habit of stealing, from somewhere in the junkpile under her bed. “I think maybe you've been brainwashed into viewing country music as some kind of joke without being given a chance to develop your own opinions.” She hooks the mp3 player up to her computer and starts doing something Lance can’t see with the screen angled away from him. “So how about you borrow this for a couple days and get a feel for Keith's music taste and try to develop an understanding of who he is, since, y’know, you're always complaining that he's an enigma.”

“I mean,” Lance shrugs, “he said he likes it because his dad liked it. So I'm learning stuff.”

“ _Jesus_ , Lance, you made fun of him for liking the music his _dead father_ listened to?” The mp3 player lands in his lap, followed shortly by a pair of headphones.

“Oh,” Lance goes white as a sheet. “Am I an asshole?” he asks. He must be, if he managed to do something like that and take this long to even _begin_ feeling remorse about it.

“Depends on how you handle it from here. Now go, I have stuff to do. And have Hunk bring the rest of those panels you repaired; I have Lion upgrades to finish and I need my hardware guy.” Pidge makes a shooing motion with her hands.

“Well we have combat training in 15 minutes, so good luck with that.”

Lance makes for the door before she can get mad about the schedule Keith made (she always wants to insist that she doesn't need combat training because she's the tech person, but knows she does need it for that exact reason; that doesn't make her hate it any less).

 

*

 

Lance approaches Keith after he's sufficiently run them ragged (Pidge and Hunk are flopped over each other in the corner, drenched in sweat and apparently falling asleep, even though everyone else has already showered and changed). Keith and Allura seem perfectly fine despite the fact that they just spent 3 hours moving nonstop, chatting in the corner with Shiro and Coran, the latter of whom did little more than shout words of encouragement from the observation room while he monitored goings-on in the universe around them.

“Hey,” Lance says as he comes to a halt beside Keith.

Keith breaks eye contact with Shiro, still smirking, to look at him. “Hey. Um, are they okay?” He nods toward Hunk and Pidge, snoring in their corner. “We didn’t mean to push them that hard, I think we just got kind of caught up and forgot to take a break.”

“Oh.” Lance waves a hand dismissively. “They’ll live. Can’t get better if you don’t push yourself, right?” He laughs, but Shiro gives him a funny look so he thinks maybe it came out wrong.

“Okay, that’s good. I thought I killed them or something.”

“Um, can we talk?” Lance asks, like Keith didn’t even say anything. He seems momentarily perplexed, but nods, and follows Lance when he starts walking out of the training deck.

It takes all his strength of will not to talk until they’re out of earshot of everyone, so the second the door closes behind them he blurts, “Keith, I am _so sorry_!”

“Um … okay. For what?” he asks, after a long silence in which Lance panics about his choices being completely unforgivable and contemplates the impact of just leaving Voltron altogether to atone for his wrongdoings.

“...What do you _mean_ , ‘for what’?”

“I’m-- I can’t elaborate on that, Lance, I’m genuinely confused.” His arms are crossed tightly over his chest as he regards Lance. “Did you … do something? Am I about to have to deal with some kind of big problem?”

“ _What_? No. What? I mean I’m sorry about last night!”

“We are very much not on the same page right n-- oh. Do you mean you’re apologizing for making fun of my music taste?”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

Keith’s shoulders relax and his grip on his own upper arms loosens. “You don’t have to apologize for that. I thought you were just joking.”

“I was!” Lance cries, when he realizes how crestfallen Keith is beginning to look. “I didn’t actually mean anything by it, it’s just that song used to be like … well, kind of like a joke, on Earth, y’know, but honestly it actually _is_ good so when I laugh at you for liking country music I’m laughing at me, too. And, also, well, I was talking to Pidge and she kinda made me realize that I shouldn’t laugh at you for liking something that reminds you of your dad, because, well--”

“Lance.” Keith’s hand is on his shoulder. “It’s fine. I’m not bothered. I was just kind of shocked you actually knew what I was talking about.”

“Oh.” This is not at all how Lance anticipated this would go. “So, you’re not mad at me?”

“No.” Keith shrugs. “And it’s, uh, it’s fine about my dad. I knew you didn’t mean anything by it, and all I was saying was that it’s his fault my music taste is the way it is.”

“Oh, thank God. I thought you were gonna hate me or something.” Fanning his face dramatically, Lance throws his head back and huffs out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. Then, something else strikes him, and with it, a little flare of hope. “Okay, so, you _don’t_ mind if I-- actually, you know what, come with me.” He grabs Keith by the wrist and starts down the corridor, ignoring the confused protests trailing behind him.

 

Keith gets very frustrated when left in the dark, apparently.

In a hilarious and endearing way, if Lance does say so himself.

“Can you _please_ explain what the hell you’re doing? Don’t tell me you’re going to rickroll the entire Atlas again. Literally nobody appreciated that.”

“Lies and slander,” Lance gasps, following the line of the overcomplicated hookup Pidge manufactured to get from the loudspeakers to a basic auxiliary cord (nothing can ever be simple, not for them). “ _Everyone_ laughed.”

Keith crosses his arms and huffs. “Except the Alteans,” he mumbles as he slouches down, banging the heel of one foot against the desk he’s sitting on.

Lance blows a raspberry at him. Keith will thank him later. Probably. It’s still almost impossible to gauge potential reactions from him.

He plugs the mp3 player in and selects the song he wants, then spins on his heel to watch Keith, who scowls in return.

The expression quickly melts away, though. “Oh, my god.”

Lance can’t help himself: he starts singing along because, well, it’s _fun_ , and fun isn’t easy to come by in war.

“What is with you and this song?” Keith asks, trying for exasperation but sounding far too amused for Lance to take him seriously.

“Don’t be a hypocrite,” Lance interrupts his singing to say, and they’ve probably got about 30 seconds before someone comes storming in there to chastise them for ‘improper use of technology’, so he’s going to make the most of it. He starts dancing, too, just as the chorus comes round -- and Keith throws his head back and _laughs_.

“ _Country roads,_ ” he bellows, but he’s smiling so wide he can barely get the words out, because Keith is _happy_ and that’s such a difficult thing to accomplish for _any_ of them. “ _Take me home._ ”

“ _To the place I belong._ ” Lance stumbles, but keeps on dancing, when Keith’s voice joins his. He was expecting some laughter, sure, but Keith is never open enough (or open to a little _enjoyment_ enough) to share in something like this with his teammates.

But if he’s going to give an inch, Lance is notorious for taking a mile.

He grabs Keith’s hands and forces him to stand, spinning them in a quick circle while Keith is busy processing what the hell is going on. Instead of getting angry, or clamming up, as is his wont, Keith’s grip on his hands tightens and he laughs more, spinning them around again.

“ _All my memories, gather round her._ ”

“ _Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water,_ ” Keith shoots right back, and Lance _has_ to take a second to reach out and turn up the volume, so the music reverberating through the Atlas is near-deafening.

It’s the moment his hand reconnects with Keith’s that the door slams open, and instead of a fuming Allura in the doorway, as Lance expects, Hunk is there, panting so hard he looks ready to collapse. Much like Lance, he lives for the meme.

Pidge is about two steps behind him, and flies through the doorway and straight into Keith and Lance, almost knocking them down.

“Stop using our speaker system for memes!” she screeches as she shoves at Lance’s chest, but she’s laughing, and Lance _knows_ she likes it just as much as the rest of them.

Keith’s hands slip from his in such a swift motion he doesn’t even process it at first, but then is left to smile awkwardly to convey his understanding of the situation.

No homo, right?

The first stirrings of dejection, for which he cannot detect an origin, start up in his chest, but then Pidge has changed the mood over to Cascada (because of _course_ she would) and it’s loud enough to make his bones rattle.

And then Allura is there, and she looks like she’s torn between murderous intent and utter bemusement, so as a precaution, Lance runs for his _life_.

Pidge only remembers to rescue the mp3 player at the last second. Lance is the first to squeeze behind Allura and out the door, and all the way down the corridor he can hear Pidge laughing and Keith panting and Hunk panicking behind him, until there’s a scrabbling and a scattering and the noises fade in all directions at an intersection.

About five minutes later, he skids into the common room that they’ve dubbed the “Paladin Lounge” (or at least he, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura have, but Keith is harder to convince, not least because he’s incapable of having _fun_ ). The sofa nearest him is carved into a divet on the floor, so he just rolls right over the edge and onto it, gasping for air. Moments later, Pidge bolts through the opposite doorway, equally short of breath. They make eye contact and both burst out laughing.

“I’m going to start charging you by the hour to borrow this,” she wheezes, dangling the mp3 player between her fingers.

“Go for it, I’ll pay you in brotherly affection and Hunk’s famous chocolate chip cookies.”

Pidge actually _groans_ , tossing the device back to Lance. “Don’t even. Hunk rations that chocolate like it’s _luxite_.”

This much is painfully true; there’s no guarantee of if or when they’ll return to Earth, so all the Earth foods they stockpiled that they aren’t able to physically grow in the Atlas gardens, Hunk treats like precious substances.

“I’ll take it for free then, thanks.” He tucks it into the pocket of his jacket.

“By the way,” Pidge starts, crawling onto the sofa next to him and turning on the television. A selection menu of films they’d chosen to download before leaving Earth appears and she passes the remote to him to scroll through. “What was that?”

“What was what?” He asks, and after a few seconds of silence glances over to see Pidge smirking uncontrollably despite her attention being focused on the screen. “ _What_?”

“You think I didn’t see what you were doing when I walked in there?” _Now_ she looks at him, and Lance swallows, because her eyes are glinting devilishly.

Of _course_ she’s going to poke fun at him. “See what?” he says, even though he’s quite aware of what she’s talking about.

“The hand-holding, you doofus!”

“I was _not_ holding his hand!” Lance squawks indignantly, remote slipping out of his hands. “We were just dancing!”

“Oh my god, like that's _different_!” Pidge cries as she flings her arms out to the sides.

“Well it's not _hand-holding_ , you presumptuous fart-face!”

“Oh, very mature, Lance.”

Lance blows a raspberry at her in lieu of a response, and of course Keith chooses that particular undignified moment to enter the room, grinning widely and pausing to breathe before throwing himself onto the couch on Lance's other side.

“She didn't follow us.”

Pidge dives for the remote where it's fallen to the floor and nods. “Well what would she do if she caught us? Sentence us to a month of cleaning the washrooms every day? Oh, wait, we already do that.”

“Not every day,” Lance points out.

“There you have it, mister keener, it can be your job.”

“Bite me, Pidge; who are _you_ calling a keener?”

“Hey, were you guys planning on actually watching anything today?” Keith asks, interrupting whatever retort Pidge was preparing.

“You can pick,” Pidge offers, holding out the remote.

“No, I'm not sticking around for the whole thing, but thanks.”

“If we let Lance pick we're going to end up watching _The Princess Bride_ for the trillionth time. Just giving adequate warning.”

Keith shrugs. “I'm fine with that.”

Pidge, in turn, sighs. “My pick, then.”

“You guys know Allura didn’t follow us, right?” Hunk saunters through the doorway holding a tray laden with snacks and drinks. “I figured I'd find you in here so I took a detour to the kitchen. Who wants Earth popcorn?”

“Oh, Hunk-a-licious, have I told you I love you today?” Lance scoots over and pats the newly-available space between him and Pidge. “Get in here. We were about to watch _The Princess Bride_.”

Pidge snorts. “We most assuredly were not. Who put _The Fox and the Hound_ on here? Who's the sadist?”

“What do you mean? It's a good movie,” Keith says, and three heads turn to him.

“Sadist!” Lance gasps, hugging the popcorn bowl Hunk just passed him closer to his chest.

“ _What_? It's a cute baby fox!”

“Yeah, and then it gets _tragic_!”

“Not if you turn it off before it gets sad.”

“Wait, pause.” Hunk holds a hand up to stop them, almost snacking Lance in his haste. “Have you ever actually finished the movie?”

“Yeah, but I've only even seen it a couple times and after the first time I always stop watching partway through,” Keith says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Well we sure are learning a lot about Keith this week,” Hunk muses around a mouthful of popcorn from the bowl he's situated between himself and Pidge.

“And we definitely are not watching _The Fox and the Hound_ , unless we _want_ to be miserable.”

Thus begins several minutes of debate over which film is _acceptable_ by everyone's standards, which culminates in the discovery that Lance can, in fact, recite most of _The Princess Bride_ script from memory. This, in turn, leads to two things: Hunk howling with laughter as he films Lance reciting the “mawwiage” speech on the communication device (read: space smartphone) he and Pidge designed, and Pidge commenting that Lance really needs to start favouring other movies.

“Like, maybe, _Lord of the Rings_ ,” Hunk suggests, and there is immediate and enthusiastic consensus that, _yes_ , they can all get behind that, followed by abject terror as they realize the sheer length of the journey they've set out on.

“Fuck,” Lance whimpers, still clinging to the damn popcorn he's supposed to be sharing with Keith.

“Okay, we can't realistically watch _Lord of the Rings_ but then _not_ watch _The Hobbit._ ” Pidge makes a valid point, but _fuck_ , Lance isn't mentally prepared for twenty-ish hours of movie marathon.

“Well, I'm going to train, you have fun with that.” Keith stands to leave, but Lance yanks him back down by the hem of his hoodie.

“Nice try, buddy. We're all in this together.”

“Oh, great, now I want to watch _High School Musical_!” Hunk laments.

“And you can!” Pidge reassures him. “In, y’know, six movies from now.”

 


	2. Take Me Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I genuinely just base chapter titles off lyrics from John Denver songs for an entire fic?? More at 11.

* * *

 

They're halfway through  _The Two Towers_  when the Atlas alarm system goes off, which, for the record, is immensely less nerve-wracking than the alarm system in the Castle of Lions. Whether this was intentional or not, it comes as a great relief to Keith, who could barely stand the shrill screech and flashing lights of the castleship.

“Paladins to the control deck immediately!” Coran’s voice booms over the intercom system, like they aren’t already all up and vaulting over the back of the couch to get to the armoury.

Keith is the first person to enter the control deck, but nearly collides with Allura on the way in, who seems baffled, more than anything else, at having not been kept in the loop about whatever the hell is going on. Lance hops between them just as they approach Coran and Shiro, the former of whom glances over his shoulder at them and nods, then mutters something to Shiro, whose head is inclined towards his own.

“Um, is there an emergency?” Keith asks. Shouldn’t they be getting to their Lions if that’s the case?

Coran just presses a finger to his lips, then turns his back again. “But are you positive it’s going to be--?” Keith can distinctly hear Shiro whisper before Hunk interrupts.

“Here! We made it!”

“Excellent.” Finally, Coran turns to face them all, and when Keith catches sight of the stopwatch in his hand he deflates. He should’ve known. “Marked improvement, paladins. I’m impressed.”

“Um, no offense, but did you really call us in here just to time us on … how fast we could get ready for battle?” Lance asks.

Coran, for his part, looks quite pleased with himself, but shakes his head. “Not at all. This is just for my own entertainment. And my journal entries, which I’m sure you’re all aware are used to document our progress across all fields. We do, in fact, have important matters to discuss.” At this, his expression becomes solemn, and Keith feels his stomach plummet with it. His thoughts immediately go to the Blades, their other rebel allies, his  _mother_ , with whom he hasn’t had contact in several weeks due to some covert operation or another.

“It has to do with 55 Cancri e, which most of you may be familiar with,” Coran starts, looking pointedly at Keith.

“Galileo?” Hunk interjects, fiddling with his helmet in his hands.

“Janssen,” Pidge corrects.

“Oh, no, you’re right. My bad. I remember that one, though. With the new coalition bases. Did something bad happen?”

Coran goes on to explain that this ‘Janssen’ planet, which apparently Voltron had frequented during Keith’s time away with the Blade of Marmora, has developed into an important hub for resistance activity in recent years. Unfortunately, the Galra loyalists have laid siege to it sometime in the last couple quintants, and the Atlas has picked up a distress message from ... well, from whoever is left alive.

“Oh, Jesus.” Lance sinks to the floor, pale-faced, and in his shock Keith tries to grab onto him to keep him upright. “That’s … they have  _kids_  there. That’s fucked up.”

“Okay,” Keith tries, stepping back to let Hunk haul Lance back to his feet. “Okay. What needs to be done?”

Coran must sense that they’re mentally preparing for a battle, all of them, because he shakes his head. “That’s just it. This isn’t an emergency because whatever Galra faction was attacking them suddenly disappeared.”

There’s a beat of silence, then: “So, what are we needed for?” Pidge asks.

The only time they ever seem to go somewhere that doesn’t require a battle is to recruit other planets and systems to the coalition, but given that Janssen already  _is_  part of the coalition, and there’s nobody to fight, Keith can’t help but wonder what the hell Coran expects them to be doing, here. He’s one hundred percent on Pidge’s side, even as Shiro casts a contemplative, if hesitant, look around at the paladins lined up before him.

“Aid,” he says eventually. “And morale.”

“Janssen is a heavily populated planet, especially factoring in multiple rebel bases. How are we going to provide aid to  _that many people_?” Hunk asks.

“Excellent question. Shiro and I have been in contact with several of our allies, who will be sending their own healers and medicine people and … what have you to Janssen to accompany us.”

“What we need from Voltron is simply to  _be there_. Help where you can, if you can, of course; but since liberating Earth there has been very little that we’ve done to keep ourselves at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and what Voltron represents, for most of the universe, is  _hope_. Our absence causes hope to diminish. We need to remind everyone that we’re out here, and we’re still fighting with them, side by side, no matter how much or how fiercely the Galra loyalists try to fight back against them.”

“So, what we’re doing is a publicity stunt?” Keith asks before he can stop himself.

“What we’re doing is providing a boost to morale,” Shiro corrects fondly.

It’s hard for Keith to tolerate a soft look like that from him, and he doesn’t even have to wonder why as a phantom pain flares up through the long-healed scar on his cheek. He twists his head to the side to glare towards Lance, who looks significantly less distraught, and more pensive.

“So, we go in there, hold some hands, dry some tears, give our condolences?”

“Pretty much. Coran might film part of our visit, if only to broadcast a reminder to the coalition of why we’re still fighting. And, of course, that Voltron is still here with them.”

And that’s that: with no argument from any of the paladins, they’re on their way. The details are worked out during the journey, while members of Team Voltron drift in and out of the kitchen. Hunk has loaded the table up with snacks to keep hands occupied while they talk. Keith finds that he doesn’t have much of an appetite, despite having pretty much only eaten popcorn today, and attributes it to nerves -- his people skills are sub-par at best, so this isn’t exactly the ideal situation for him.

Coran is playing back the distress message for them as Hunk waves an apple slice near Keith’s nose in an attempt to entice him to eat it. He takes it and nibbles on it only because it’s been dipped in caramel sauce.

Also, it isn’t just one message. It’s the initial cry for help (“SOS: Galra attack, send backup”, the usual), then two follow-up messages with significantly more detail. Coordinates of attacks, where Galra soldiers and sentries were actually on the ground, which areas were hardest hit, approximate estimates of casualties, explanations of defense measures taken. It’s been sent both in audio format and in multiple written languages, English and Altean among them.

“Alright, so…” Keith sighs and rubs his temples with the hand that isn’t still holding a half-eaten apple slice. “So, give me the list of capital cities again?”

Pidge is already three-quarters of the way through drawing and labelling a map that is a rough approximation of Janssen’s land masses, quadrants, and “distinctions”, as they refer to their equivalents of countries. Hunk is hovering over her, adding asterisks to the locations of the rebel bases they have knowledge of.

“Comparing the data from our somewhat outdated map with what’s in the message, we’ve got two cities in the northern hemisphere hardest hit, one right along the … well, I guess the equator right in the middle of the day side, and four to the south on the night side, though one is more towards what we would generally consider the ‘habitable zone’.” Pidge turns the map toward him. “So, in order, that would be: Yavo and Terryeamok, then Szdrakvantye on the equator, and Hilm, Herat, Nortwe, and Kilnurheim in the south.”

“Then there’s the info about which rebel bases have taken the most damage, which is honestly most of them. The initial base -- the one we helped establish -- Altea, was apparently pretty much razed to the ground. Not sure if we should even bother going there.”

“Varadero base is in better condition than the rest, and is apparently taking in whoever needs help.”

Keith doesn’t even have to ask to know who named that one.

“Seeing as it’s a primarily civilian-occupied planet, I’d hazard a guess that most of the people they’re taking in are native Jansset civilians?” asks Allura, having appeared in the doorway with her helmet tucked under her arm.

“Well, considering they didn’t really leave much of the rebel population alive, that’s a safe assumption,” Pidge offers, wincing.

“There were a total of six coalition bases on the planet, plus the outpost on Dorset. One of the moons,” Hunk clarifies for Keith’s sake. “There’s no mention of Fermi or Dyson in the transmission, but apparently Spock and Yalexian were hit pretty hard. I have to assume Dorset is alright, too, but we could always swing by and check up on them before we land.”

Keith sighs. So, they have roughly fourteen different places they need to be, and there are seven of them. Plus a couple crew members, who probably need to stay on the ship. Their MFE pilots are running drills with Iverson god-knows-where (actually, Shiro knows where, but he's not pulling them out of their training to do work meant for the paladins of Voltron themselves). Krolia is off kicking ass with Kolivan for at least two more quintants and Matt has been gone with his rebel pals for over a movement, so there goes the potential for a couple extra sets of hands.

As if reading his mind, Kosmo materializes beside him. Hunk nearly jumps a foot in the air (even though this is a common occurrence). Sure, teleporting would help, but it isn’t going to make much of a difference if Keith needs to be interacting with the people at every stop, rather than just hopping back and forth between locations. “Yeah, yeah.” He scratches Kosmo behind the ears and his wagging tail smacks Lance repeatedly on the side. “You can come, too, if you want.”

Coran immediately votes against that motion, and  _that_  is when everyone else decides to inform him that Janssen is  _hot as hell_.

“Why,” he begins as calmly as he can manage, “did we think it was a good idea to build coalition bases on a planet with an average daily temperature of  _four hundred_  Kelvin?”

“Well, the locals seemed to manage just fine,” Lance defends, holding Kosmo’s wriggling tail at bay so it stops hitting him.

“Plus the Galra loyalists would never expect anyone in their right mind to go there,” Hunk adds.

“Is this a bad time to mention it’s also a primarily carbon planet?” Allura pipes up, and Keith puts his face in his hands.

“Probably better to mention that the majority of the rebels who operate from the bases we’ve helped establish are either from carbon-based planets, dangerously hot planets, or in some cases both. There  _are_  other planets out there like 55 Cancri e.”

“Coran, that’s… I appreciate that, but we, the humans, are from a relatively cool, oxygen-rich planet.”

“Whatever, Keith, look on the bright side: Earth scientists thought Janssen had an average temperature of about twenty-five hundred Kelvin on the day side. We would have died instantly!”

Keith stares at Pidge for a long while, then says, “Yeah, about that. How exactly did you guys survive there every time you went?” Halfway through his question Lance starts shaking his head violently and making slicing motions across his throat, but Keith opts to ignore him and regrets this almost immediately.

Coran begins  _raving_  about the technology in the paladin suits, and then Altean tech in general, and regulation this and thermal that, and of course interrupts himself once in while to remind everyone of the importance of keeping their gear on during their visit, and -- Keith cuts him off when Lance begins looking vaguely homicidal. His sense of self-preservation kicks in.

“So, we’ll be fine, then,” he says emphatically, looking Coran in the eye.

“Yes, of course, lad, nothing to worry about!”

“But no space wolves?”

“‘Fraid not.”

Kosmo’s ears and tail droop, and Keith isn’t sure whether he understood Coran’s words or if he’s just interpreting the look Keith is giving him. “Sorry, buddy.” He shrugs, and Kosmo huffs and disappears in a flash of light.

Shiro is back in the room, decked out in his old Black paladin armour, by the time they finish compiling a list of priority destinations.

There are enough medical teams coming their way from their allies to send one or two to every necessary location. The plan of action is to get them to work ASAP while several backup crews work to set up impromptu hospitals or expand existing ones to prepare for the chaos. There are a couple allies with advanced medical facilities who will be transporting whatever patients they can take back to their planets for care. In the meantime, members of Team Voltron will make stops at a randomly selected set of targeted areas and try to boost morale in the remaining populations. For the sake of security (and because some of their team is socially inept), they will be travelling in pairs.

Which leads to Keith’s biggest dilemma of all: who will go with who?

Coran tries to sway his decision by insisting he wants the princess of Altea and the leader of Voltron to travel together so he can film their interactions with the people they are visiting, but Keith shoots that idea down in a heartbeat. Absolutely no way in hell is he letting Coran film his fumbling attempts at socializing to broadcast to the entire coalition.

If anything, Allura and Shiro should travel together, since they’re both well-spoken, diplomatic kind of people.

Neither of them protest, and Coran relents to filming them easily, but his battle isn’t won yet.

He and Pidge still need to have an argument about who gets to go with Hunk.

If it were up to him, he’d stick Lance and Hunk together because they’re “besties”, and he and Pidge could go off gallivanting around the wreckage of the planet together, but then the two people least suited to dealing with this kind of situation would be stuck dealing with it together.

Or, rather, someone who is actually somewhat well-suited to it would be stuck dealing with him and his … social awkwardness.

So what Shiro prescribes is he pick someone to travel with who can balance out his incompetence, but Shiro uses much nicer words than that, and Keith discreetly tries to shift his chair away from him when he moves in too close, though he must not be particularly discreet if the strange look Lance gives him is anything to go by.

His options for a companion are Lance or Hunk, so Hunk would be the obvious choice.

According to Pidge, at least, who  _also_  would prefer to travel with Hunk, because, “It’s not that Lance isn’t great at socializing, it’s that he’s  _too good_  at socializing and is probably going to be way too peppy, and this is not the time!”

“ _What_?! Are you implying that I can’t be … all somber and, and … dignified at a time like this?”

“It is a rare occasion, Lance. I don’t think I’ve ever personally witnessed it.”

Pidge may not have, but Keith has. He just has to refuse to cave here because…

Well, not so much for whatever reason Pidge has reservations about working with Lance today. More like …  _feelings_  reasons, and maybe something to do with the fact that he sort of, in some sense, held Lance’s hand this morning, and maybe more specifically that he sort of danced with him. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Lance is, perhaps, objectively, attractive, and also that he’s slightly taller than Keith and slightly broader and that his voice has been getting deeper and  _maybe_ , okay, just  _maybe_ , that makes Keith a little weak in the knees  _sometimes_.

Sue him.

The fact of the matter is, Keith would prefer not to travel with Lance today because he’s going to make a fool of himself in front of someone he has this big, dumb crush on. Worse yet, he’s probably going to cry in front of him, if what happened on Janssen is as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

Pidge’s point could be valid; even though he knows it isn’t entirely true, and that Lance is definitely going to be an immensely comforting presence for all those poor Jansset aliens and their rebel allies.

“Oh, so you don’t want to deal with him, so  _I_  get stuck with him?”

“Hey, wh- wait a second!” Lance cries, sounding genuinely offended. “Are you actually fighting over  _not_  having to work with me?”

“Yes!” they both snap, and Pidge leaps to her feet, so Keith follows suit.

“Rock-paper-scissors?”

“Fine,” Keith growls, and Lance looks devastated but Hunk is howling with laughter.

“Oh, yeah, laugh away. They’re fighting over  _you_!”

Keith loses spectacularly at rock-paper-scissors while Lance sulks, even after he insists on “best two out of three” and then, desperately, “best three out of five”. Coran sternly encourages him to admit defeat when he demands Pidge  _has_  to be cheating, but he  _does_  feel kind of bad when Lance grumbles something about how it must be so terrible to be stuck with him.

It’s quite the opposite of terrible, actually, or it would be in a better situation. Like, one where they  _aren’t_  going to go sifting through the aftermath of a battle and hold dying peoples’ hands.

 

Keith and Lance end up going to Varadero base at Lance’s insistence, and Lance opens a private communication channel the second Black and Red are out of the hangar.  _“I thought we were friends.”_

“Lance, we are friends, I just--”

 _“You’re a traitor,”_  he says petulantly.

“What’s wrong with me wanting to spend time with Hunk?”

_“Well, I mean, nothing, but...”_

“I never said I  _didn’t_  want to spend time with you, only that for a mission like this I’d rather be with Hunk.”

There’s a beat of silence, then:  _Why? What’s different?”_

Keith sighs. He doesn’t know how to phrase it himself, except maybe the way Lance would phrase it, which goes something like, “I dunno. The … feelsy stuff?”

_What, you mean like, comforting people?”_

“Yeah, it’s, uh.”

Lance laughs. _"Don’t worry. You’re plenty good at comforting people, trust me.”_

“It’s not so much that as it is, um, being able to handle interacting with people who are injured or who just lost loved ones or who just lost _everything_  and not get…” He realizes he’s being a little to honest and his cheeks burn bright. “Y’know, emotional,” he finishes quietly.

Lance whistles.  _“Who knew that Keith, O glorious leader of Voltron, would be capable of empathy!”_

“Lance…”

_“Why are you worried about having emotions, dude? Did someone tell you that guys can’t have feelings when you were a kid? They lied, you know.”_

“I know I’m allowed to have feelings. Geez. It’s just … weird.”

_“Don’t get all ‘fragile masculinity’ on me now. We were getting along. We were pals!”_

“It’s not … I’m not--” Keith can’t suppress a giggle, because Lance is being completely unreasonable right now but he feels about a hundred times less awkward about their situation already.

_“Then cry, damn you!”_

“I’m not gonna--” Keith snorts, then claps a hand over his mouth and nose. “Stop that, I don’t just cry on cue!”

_“Then you would not do well in theatre.”_

“No shit. You think I have any acting skills to go with not being able to cry whenever I want?”

_“So, explain to me how you got yourself out of trouble as a kid if you couldn’t cry your way out of every situation.”_

Keith shakes his head and checks the digital clock equipped to the Black Lion’s control panel. They’ve opted to all approach the planet from different sides and from varying distances, just in case someone is trying to set some kind of trap for them (Hunk, ever cautious, formulated that plan), and with Keith and Lance being the first to leave the Atlas they still have almost ten minutes before they reach their destination.

When Keith doesn’t respond to him, Lance starts a video feed and uses it to glare at him while they fly through the vast expanse of space towards 55 Cancri A and its various planets.

“...What?”

 _“I_  cannot _believe you like Hunk better. I mean I get the guy is a ray of sunshine but I thought I could at least hold a candle to him.”_

If Keith didn’t know any better, he’d say Lance sounds jealous, but he just rolls his eyes and focuses on reaching their intended coordinates.

_“And after I made a big display of playing your favourite song for you.”_

_This_  provokes a response. Keith raises an eyebrow at Lance through the camera. “That’s presumptuous.”

_“...What do you mean?”_

“I never said it was my favourite. Just that I like it. I said John Denver was my favourite singer but I never said which of his songs is my favourite.”

Lance visibly cycles through several emotions before speaking.  _“I’m … wh-- okay, so then, hold on, what is--”_

_“Keith, Lance, you two have been radio silent for a couple minutes now. Everything alright?”_

The Black Lion veers sharply left as Keith tries to avoid a flash of purple light produced by his own imagination. He opens the channel back up, but the video link he has with Lance remains open. “I’m, uh, yeah, we’re fine,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady as his heart pounds and he straightens Black out to fly parallel to Red again. “It’s all clear out this way.”

_“Alright. Hunk and Pidge just left the hangar about a third of the way around from where we dropped you off. They’re making a pit stop at Dorset since it’s in their trajectory. Allura and I will approach from the opposite side in a bit and we’ll be taking the Atlas planetside with us. Give us a shout if anything comes up.”_

Keith gives a strained hum and Shiro’s presence disappears from their communication line. It only takes one look at Lance to read the deadly curiosity in his eyes, so he closes off their video link.

_“Hey!”_

“Leave it, Lance,” he growls, and hears Lance grumbling and protesting under his breath, but he doesn’t actually resist.

In fact, he’s silent for several moments, then music starts playing through their comm link.  _“Is it this one?”_  he asks over the sound of John Denver’s “Back Home Again”, and it takes Keith a second to figure out what he’s talking about.

“...Really?”

_“Is that a no?”_

“No, this is not my favourite song. Why do you care so much?”

Lance hums.  _“Well, we live in space together, and we’ve lived in space together on and off for, uh, a couple years now, but nobody except--”_  he clears his throat abruptly.  _“Nobody really knows anything about you, y’know, except that you never finish watching_ The Fox and the Hound _and apparently you like country music. Oh, and you like the colour red, I’m pretty sure.”_

Keith shrugs even though Lance can’t see him. “Yeah, red’s alright.”

_"And this is why no one knows anything about you.”_

“Oh, my sincerest apologies for being vague. I didn’t realize I’m expected to be willing to share every second of the day.”

_“No, wait, I forgot one: also that you’re a sarcastic buttmunch.”_

“How mature.”

_“This one is called ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’. Dare I ask?”_

He actually has to suppress a laugh at that one, because he definitely remembers jumping all over the front room at the shack while his dad blasted that on the stereo, making a fool of himself and screaming the lyrics. “That’s a pretty good song.”

 _“Could it possibly be a_  favourite _?”_

“No. What makes you think I  _have_  a favourite song?”

_“Everyone does.”_

“Do you?”

_“I have many favourites. I like to sort them by language and by genre.”_

Keith  _does_  have a favourite song, as people tend to, but it’s a bittersweet favourite. And Lance is batting a thousand by assuming it’s by John Denver, because of course it is. He doesn’t have a lot of memories of his father left intact after all this time (not that he had many in the first place), but if there’s one that stands out,  _really_  stands out, whether for importance or because the scenario recurred so many times, it would be of his dad holding him in arms, spinning around outside under the stars. “Your mother and I used to dance to this song every night,” he’d say, as the cresting melody of “Annie’s Song” drifted through the open windows and doors and out into the night with them.

He doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he blinks them open, suspiciously wet, as they approach the first planet in 55 Cancri A’s system. The star looms ahead of them, a fair distance that the Lions will cover in mere minutes.

A new song starts playing, and Keith grins. “This is Hank Williams,” he says, and Lance says something unintelligible in Spanish.

_“I think Pidge really just put all kinds of other country music in the folders, too. Oh, hey, ‘Chicken Fried’ is on here. What a bop, honestly.”_

“I’m contacting the others to let them know we’re almost there,” he warns as he opens the channel to everyone else again. “Hey, guys. About 30 ticks from Janssen. Seems clear. Let us know when you’re close.”

Lance starts playing “Chicken Fried” over the comms, seemingly unfazed by the fact that literally everyone else is listening.

 _“Ooh,_  yes _!”_  Hunk says, and Keith can distinctly hear him snapping his fingers through the sound of Pidge’s agonized,  _“Oh, god, what have I done?”_

 _“Great,”_  Shiro says, but he sounds like he’s in pain as much as Pidge is, or maybe like he’s trying  _really_  hard not to laugh. _“We’ll be there shortly, as well.”_

 _“Yup, approaching Dorset for landing,”_  Pidge is saying, while in the background Hunk howls,  _“And the radio oooon!”_

Keith mutes Lance and Hunk’s incoming transmissions when they start belting out the lyrics together with no regard for anyone’s eardrums. He makes a slow left as he follows the directions to the coordinates of Varadero base, and tries to ignore the fact that even from outside the planet’s atmosphere he can see fire blazing, smoke rising, and entire craters in the surface, which in some places appears almost crystalline.

 _“No, yeah, I think he has you on mute,”_  Pidge says suddenly.  _“Trust me, we’re all considering it.”_  Lance must be trying to get ahold of him.

“What does he want?”

_“He was just reminding you to look out for volcanoes.”_

Keith must have misheard. No one mentioned anything about volcanoes, and there’s no way a nightmare planet like this (tidally locked, deadly temperatures, unbreatheable air) could possibly get any  _worse_. “Sorry, wh--?” Nope, there are, in fact, volcanoes here. Active volcanoes, he realizes, as a plume of smoke and hot rock obscures his vision and debris batters the Black Lion’s head for a moment while he attempts to steer out of it.

_“He says, ‘Yeah, like that’.”_

“Can I just ask again who thought it was good idea to build  _anything_  here?”

 _“Did you mute Hunk, too?”_  Pidge asks, but Keith is busy landing and just sighs as the Red Lion settles onto the open stretch of plain ahead of him.

“Did they stop singing yet?” he retorts as he closes his visor and makes sure his armour is completely sealed up to protect him from the elements.

 _“Yup,”_  she says, popping the ‘p’, so Keith unmutes his teammates, one of whom is in the middle of giving updates about the state of affairs on the moon.

“Lance, I’m on my way out,” he says, steadying himself on the back of the seat as Black lowers her head to the ground. “You good to go?”

 _“I get it, Keith. My singing is just that horrible,”_  Lance huffs instead, beyond petulant.

He’s never rolled his eyes so hard in his life. “You’re singing is plenty beautiful. Can we please go?”

Without awaiting a response, he makes his way down the gangplank in Black’s jaw as her mouth creaks open slowly. She seems to be struggling with the motion, but he doesn’t sense any distress from her, so chalks it up to her reluctance to let him out on a dangerous planet (as though they aren’t constantly throwing themselves into dangerous situations).

He’s got his bayard at the ready, in case the locals perceive them as a threat or any Galra soldiers have decided to linger here and wait for some unsuspecting coalition members to arrive so they can ambush them.

Even if someone were waiting around, he wouldn’t have a chance to use his sword. The moment he leaves the safety of the Black Lion’s jaw, he barely prevents himself from toppling over, and his bayard is practically yanked from his hand by the force of gravity. It lodges itself a good three or four centimetres into the mixture of dirt and coal-like substance at his feet.

Lance, for his part, seems much more prepared for this scenario, as Keith can see him stretching and marching on the spot just inside of Red’s jaw. He knocks on the side of his helmet a couple times, which echoes in Keith’s earpiece, then clips his bayard to his belt and comes marching right down the ramp towards Keith.

 _“Hey, you didn’t fall over!”_  He exclaims, loud enough for Keith to be able to hear across the distance between their Lions even if he didn't have a link through the helmet.  _“No fair! The rest of us all fell down the first time.”_

“Would you prefer if I did? I don’t think I could stand up again after.”

Lance scoffs as he strolls over to his side, making a point of lifting his knees a little bit higher than necessary. “It’s a good workout.”

“Yeah, you failed to mention the gravity problem among the deadly heat and volcanoes issue.”

“Did we? Welp. Gravity is about, what, uh--?”

 _“2.273 g here,”_  Pidge interjects helpfully.  _“As opposed to the Atlas and Earth’s 1 g. So whatever you weigh, double it and add some.”_

Keith takes a long, deep breath. “Let me just ask, one last time, why  _anybody would want to live here_?”


	3. Raining Fire in the Sky

 

* * *

  

     Fighting in a space war comes with its fair share of injuries. Keith would know. He's been caught in explosions, stabbed, shot, and burned more times than he can count, among other things. Hell, just a couple months ago he fell from the fourth storey of a building and came out of it okay -- though he can probably thank his paladin armour for the fact that he's alive after that one.

     So if he got hurt when the Galra attacked them on Janssen, he doesn't expect there to be much damage. Sure, the force of the explosion sent him flying through the air and skidding several metres across the diamond-hard surface of the planet, but like he said, he's had worse.

     Why the hell, then, is his whole back one big bruise that just won't go away? It's sore and hideous and makes everything more difficult, on top of serving as a reminder of how miserably they'd failed at protecting their own coalition. He still can't shake the memories of sifting through the rubble of Varadero base even though he knew full-well no one inside had survived.

     The Galra who made the second attack on the planet were monsters, plain and simple. There were children in that building, children that Lance and Keith had just been talking to, assuring them that the paladins of Voltron could do anything and would protect them from the Galra if they came again.

     And they hadn't. The haunted look he keeps catching in Lance's eyes and the mottled bruising over his back won't let him forget that.

     Even though the bruises hurt, even though it makes his ribs ache spectacularly, he wipes the sweat from his forehead and clashes with the training simulation again, determined to be better next time.

 

*

 

     Keith knows he’s sick long before he  _knows_. After several weeks of dragging himself, day after day, through a fog of malaise and exhaustion, how could he not? So it's hardly a surprise when a wave of dizziness overtakes him during training one morning, causing him to waver dangerously as everything fades out.

     He goes down hard, and wakes up in the med bay, supported between Hunk and Shiro.

     “I'm fine,” he insists, when they try to cram him into a healing pod. “I'm fine. I just went to bed late last night.”

     The lie tastes almost as bitter as the bile that rises up in his throat only a few hours later, while he's hunched over the toilet in his private bathroom.

     Something is wrong, something is probably very wrong, but he doesn't want to know what. If he's ill, that makes him a liability and a burden. He can't fight in a war if he's ill, and he'll become a drain on resources, and nobody wants to keep someone around who is useless and greedy like that.

     So, he isn't sick, because he can't be, he tells himself, forcing a third spoonful of Hunk's special space stew down his throat, pretending he actually has an appetite (he hasn't in about a month).

     Hunk eyes him suspiciously, and Keith knows Hunk can tell he's lost weight; he probably sees the bags under his eyes, and the way his hand shakes when he sets the spoon down beside his bowl and pinches the bridge of his nose to ward off an oncoming headache. He sighs and abandons the rest of his dinner in favour of a short and boiling hot shower. It takes tremendous effort not to throw up the meager amount of food he just ate.

 

 

     Keith sleeps for eleven hours, and wakes up exhausted. And cold. It's always so cold on the Atlas.

     He endures breakfast and training (which is, fortunately, just team-building exercises today), then promptly returns to his room to sleep more.

     Someone knocks on his door.

     He groans into his pillow and tries to ignore it, but the knock comes again, insistent.

     “What?” he hisses, glaring at the closed door.

     “Um,” says a voice on the other side. “It's Hunk. I noticed you didn't really eat much for breakfast, so I brought you some leftovers from the past couple days in case you just didn't like what I made. Which is cool! We don't all have the same tastes.”

     Keith feels simultaneously flattered that Hunk is putting that much effort into ensuring his well-being, and guilty for making him think he doesn't like his food. He likes everything Hunk makes. Hunk could make literal dirt taste good.

     “So, um, I guess I'll just leave it here if you want it.”

     Keith scrambles out of bed and hobbles to the door, legs and joints aching, throwing it open just as Hunk is crouching to set the container down on the floor.

     “Thanks,” he says, offering Hunk a quick smile. He's not entirely clear on the rules of social interactions, but he's pretty sure he knows how to be genuine when thanking someone.

     Hunk straightens up and smiles back, placing the container in his hands. “No problem, dude! Gotta keep our favourite ninja warrior in top condition!” He taps the lid of the container with his index finger and grins cheekily, adding, “There's a bag of those Mayurian fruit candies you like in here, courtesy of Lance. Pidge wants my help with something down in the hangars, so I'll see you around.”

     He waves, turns on his heel, and hurries off down the hall.

     Keith stares reverently at the container in his hands as he closes the door behind him. The exhaustion is starting to weigh down on his limbs. Maybe if he just put some actual calories into his body, he wouldn't be so tired all the time. He pries the lid off and goes straight for the candies.

     His stomach turns the second he raises one to his lips, as if to say, “Don't you dare.”

     He sighs and sets the bag of candy on his desk, then pours everything else down the garbage chute, sending out a silent plea for Hunk’s forgiveness.

     His nap is interrupted again by an unusual sensation against his face, and a thick coppery smell permeating the air around him. He jerks awake and claps a hand over his nose, attempting to stem the flow of blood, which has already soaked into a significant part of his pillow.

     Dizziness almost overwhelms him again as he drags himself to his feet and shuffles into the washroom. He probably shouldn't be panting from the exertion of a three second walk across his room, but he can't seem to catch his breath, settling down with his back against the counter and a huge wad of toilet paper held under his nose.

     This fucking sucks.

     He sighs and flops his head back against the cupboard door. This super fucking sucks.

     What the hell is even wrong with him? It's like he has the super flu, or the universe's worst cold, or some other ridiculous space bullshit.

     And he has a headache. Again.

 

*

 

     Would anyone notice if he stole a humongous bottle of heavy-duty Altean-formula painkillers from the med bay?

     Answer: No. Surprisingly.

     Unless Coran is onto him and just isn’t saying anything about it as a means of avoiding conflict. Besides, one could safely assume that Keith only needs painkillers to dull the ache of over-exerting himself in training all the time. They do a damn good job of forcing him to fall asleep.

     It’s only after he sleeps through the mission alarm that he realizes taking pills that make him essentially comatose every night is, potentially, a bad idea.

     “You’re lucky it wasn’t more serious,” Shiro is saying, arms crossed as he stares Keith down. His disappointment would be more discouraging if Keith weren’t still half asleep and confused as fuck. How long did he even sleep for? What time is it? His gaze starts wandering around the control room as he searches for something to help him. Shiro sighs. “I expect this from Lance, but not from you.”

     If he could form coherent sentences, Keith would defend Lance, but as it is Coran hops in before the situation can escalate.

     Keith may be drugged the hell up, but he can see something off about the look Coran is giving him.

     “I’m sure Number Four was just sleeping off a hard day’s work. We’ve all experienced a deep sleep like that, right?” A hand clamps down on his shoulder suddenly, and Keith barely has the presence of mind to jump. “Come along, let’s get you back to bed.” Coran begins steering him towards the doorway. The last thing he sees on his way out is Shiro shaking his head and dragging a hand through his hair as he flops back into one of the technician's chairs.

     He allows Coran to direct him through the corridor back to his room, grateful for the silence. Coran isn’t usually this quiet.

     “Um, thanks,” he murmurs as he fumbles for the door control. As the door slides open, Coran follows him into his room, an inscrutable expression twisting his features.

     “Where are they?”

     Keith groans and flops down on his bed, wrapping the blankets around himself immediately and basking in the meager warmth they provide. “‘S fine,” he insists, drawing the edge of a blanket up over his ears.

     Coran, undeterred, stalks into the washroom and emerges moments later with the bottle of painkillers clutched in one hand. “You haven’t been using these to sleep, have you?”

     “What’s it look like?” He doesn’t really mean to be so rude -- he’s just exhausted, and groggy, and not as much in control of his brain as he’d like to be.

     “Are you having trouble sleeping?” Coran asks, like Keith isn’t spitting sarcasm at him, and he scrunches up his face and burrows further into the bed.

     It isn’t so much that he’s struggling to fall asleep, but that there’s the lack of a certain satisfaction upon waking lately -- the results of a good rest, that is. And the painkillers have, in miniscule amounts, returned that sense to him. Without them, he fades in and out of sleep throughout the night, tugged to consciousness by nausea or aching bones or the cold or sore joints, and wakes poorly rested and grouchy. With them, he sleeps through the night, unaware of the discomfort in his entire body, and wakes ....  _less_  poorly rested and grouchy.

     Regardless, it’s becoming a personality trait at this point.

     “Yeah,” he decides, because to imply otherwise would require more in-depth explanations he is in no way willing to provide.

     Coran affixes him with a steady, unreadable look, then sighs. “Falling asleep without them becomes increasingly difficult with prolonged use. I’d recommend an alternative -- we do have some patches that work wonders for sleepless nights somewhere in the infirmary -- however, I must agree with Shiro on this point. It is in no way befitting of the leader of Voltron to be sleeping through missions like this.”

     “I…” Keith’s eyes are burning. What the hell. No way is he getting emotional about something stupid like painkillers. Coran, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice, as he glances back down at the bottle and turns it over in his hands. Only way Keith can get him to leave him be is-- “It’s fine. I don’t really need them. I’ll probably be fine now.”

     Coran advances, and all Keith can think is  _no, go, just leave_ , because when a hand squeezes his shoulder gently he starts losing the battle against his emotions. “Is there a reason you were using them?”

     “Um, just,”  _Fuck_ , come up with a believable lie already. He bites his lip and sighs, still a bit off from the effects of the painkillers. “I, no, I was just kinda restless and I knew those made people tired. I can always just go for a walk if I’m restless, y’know, so, go ahead and take them. You’re right.”

     Coran lingers for several seconds too long, then straightens up and grins. “Well, if ever you feel that you’re having difficulty sleeping, I am sure I’d make an excellent companion for a late-night walk around the Atlas. I’ve been told some of my stories could put anyone to sleep!” he boasts, and Keith actually cracks a smile.

     “Coran, I … I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

     “Nonsense,” Coran insists, waving a hand dismissively towards Keith as he makes for the door. “I’ll be returning these to the infirmary, but as I said, if ever you’d like company on a walk, if it helps, you know where to find me!”

     The door closes, and a single tear rolls down Keith’s cheek before he can stop it.

 

     His ribs are so sore when he wakes, it takes tremendous effort just to sit up, and he makes an agonized noise somewhere between a creaky door hinge and a dog whistle as he does so. In fact,  _everything_  hurts, and he spends at  _least_  ten minutes bemoaning this, hunched over on the edge of the bed, while he attempts to stretch the aches out in as slow and gentle a manner as is possible.

     The blanket slips off his shoulders and a shivers seizes him with such vigor his teeth actually chatter a bit. Quiznak, he’s  _freezing_. He lunges for the hoodie tossed carelessly atop the dresser and yanks it over his head, basking in the meagre warmth it provides, thick maroon material and astonishingly soft inside a much better alternative to the jacket that barely covers half his torso. As attached as he is, the jacket is not as useful as this when he’s as cold as he’s been as of late. Burrowing his icy, aching hands into the pockets, he tucks his nose into the collar and breathes deeply.

     Today is going to suck, he can already feel it.

     Lance catches him in the corridor and must not notice how out-of-it he is, because he falls into step beside him and chatters about Pidge's something-or-other and movie-marathon this and sleepover that. It's been a couple weeks since they all did something nice together. Lance and Hunk have made plans to introduce Allura and Romelle to some Earth customs.

     Last time they tried to exchange planetary customs with each other, Allura had dressed them all in flimsy tunics and tried to set them on fire, so Keith is understandably apprehensive. He doesn't voice his concern, just yawns, and Lance throws a questioning look his way. "Dude, we just woke up. How are you already tired?"

     "Didn't sleep well."

     Lance frowns at this, then turns his head to watch where they're walking. "Seemed to me like you slept pretty good last night, considering."

     Right, the stupid mission thing. He closes his eyes and exhales heavily through is nose, but chooses not to respond. How embarrassing on his part. He's supposed to be their leader and he can't even wake up to join them for an emergency.

     Lance fiddles with the earbud dangling over his shoulder, music playing faintly through it, then offers it to him. He has that _look_  again, like he's remembering fire and heat raining down on them and desperately trying to get to the Lions and watching the massive dome of Varadero base collapse as the force of the blast knocked them backwards -- Keith has to squeeze his eyes shut and take a deep breath. He accepts the proffered earbud and they walk the rest of the way to the dining hall in silence.

    There's something to be said about shared trauma bringing people together. Keith finds he never truly believed that until now.

 


	4. Sunshine Almost Always...

Keith feels, for lack of a better word, like  _garbage_.

He hasn’t gotten  _better_ , not really, but he’s found ways to manage. Though eating is still a chore, he’s at least improved significantly in the art of keeping his food down (this achievement, unfortunately, requires him to take much smaller portions than what once was normal, and he wonders if maybe someone might notice -- after all, Coran somehow managed to notice the medication, and Hunk was suspicious when his eating habits first began to change). Even if he is actually taking in some form of nutrition once in a while, he’s still rapidly losing weight. The bones in his wrists stick out so sharply it’s near painful, and if ever he chances a look in the mirror while changing, he can see each individual rib with ease. Their rooms in the Atlas have every luxury Lance and Allura thought necessary: walk-in closets, full bathrooms with tubs too large to be reasonable and plenty of counter space. Full-length mirrors mounted to the walls in each room.

Eventually, Keith covers the mirror with a sheet, because he’s tired of being reminded of how miserable and sickly he looks every day.

It’s too much, anyway. Perhaps they thought luxury and comfort like as this would be beneficial to their team, weary from a war that never seems to end. Initially, he thought he might be able to bring himself to appreciate that extra effort, but luxury and comfort have never been home to him (though, neither have any other places, of any other kind).

And he sleeps. If he isn’t needed by his team, and if he isn’t forcing food he doesn’t even want down his throat, then he’s sleeping.

It’s a damn good thing he isn’t the most social of the paladins, and that even his minor improvement since his return from the Blade had gone relatively unnoticed, because it makes it less suspicious that he’s never around. If he were more like Lance, or Hunk, or … or  _anyone_ , really, someone would assuredly be questioning his absence.

As it stands, he’s been subjected to several remarks along the lines of “We never see you anymore” in the past few months, mostly from Lance, surprisingly.

It’s not really his fault, though.

Or, maybe it sort of is, if it can be his fault that he feels so awful lately.

Like he said; garbage.

It’s an unfortunate fact that he  _cannot_ sleep in an open space, or anywhere he feels too vulnerable. Couple that with the fact that his body is constantly, endlessly insisting he do nothing  _but_ sleep, and he’s introduced to an interesting dilemma.

Naturally, whenever someone catches him on his way to bed and  _insists_ he spend time with his team, he obliges, because he  _wants_ to be around them, and he feels guilty for what a poor job he’s been doing of being a leader.

And it’s on the common room sofa, every once in a while, sandwiched between two warm bodies, or holding a deck of Earth playing cards in his trembling hand, or losing track of some overly-complicated holographic game or another, that his body wages war on itself over the issue: to sleep or not to sleep?

The base, primal part of his brain, the part that relies almost explicitly on instinct, that developed under the pressure of foster homes and cruel hands and nightmarish experiences, pulls tension through his spine at the mere idea of falling asleep here, in the open, with  _all these people_. It’s dangerous; he’d be leaving himself exposed; he  _can’t_ sleep here, it says.

Whatever space illness has invaded his body (he’s fallen into a state of reluctant acceptance by now) tries desperately to drag him under, because he’s just so beyond exhausted, physically and mentally, it’s all he has the energy for. Eat (whatever he can without being sick), sleep (not here; must be safe in his own room), train (don’t let them know something is wrong).

Some days, as the activity in the common room settles and his teammates start wandering off in search of a shower, or a snack, or a nice warm bed, he thinks to himself that, at last, he’s been granted a reprieve from the obligations of social interaction and can crawl into bed and stay there for as long as possible. Some days, he hasn’t the energy left to move himself, and has to lounge around for anywhere from five to thirty minutes giving himself a mental pep talk that always culminates in something like, “You’re not going to sleep properly here anyway! Crawl if you have to!”

He has yet to fall asleep on the couch, yes, but hell if he isn’t getting closer every day. His stomach aches at the very thought.

Then there’s the cold.

It  _never goes away_. Not during training, not flying in Black (or sneaking into Red in a fit of desperation), not when he’s stuck on the common room couch with Hunk close by his side, laughing heartily over a game of Jenga. Not now, curled up under every single fucking blanket he could get his hands on, fingers tucked up under his armpits in an attempt to regain some feeling.

He falls asleep with his teeth chattering and his hands numb.

 

*

 

“Something is wrong,” Lance announces loudly, throwing himself over the back of the couch and onto the cushions. The motion causes Pidge, who is sitting nearby, to bounce so high her computer is nearly dislodged from her lap.

“Yep, that would be your brain function. We’ve known for a while.” She reaches out to pat his leg reassuringly without even looking away from whatever she’s doing on the laptop.

“Pidge, I’m being serious.”

“Wait, is this about Keith?” Hunk asks from the far side of the couch, sprawled out on his back with a frighteningly overcomplicated Altean version of a Rubik’s cube in his hands, and then Pidge  _does_  look up from the laptop.

“Okay, so, I’m not the only person who noticed he’s been acting weird.”

Lance throws his hands up defensively. “Oh, so when I say something I get made fun of but when Hunk does it you’re immediately on his side!”

“Hunk was more specific!”

“I was more specific,” Hunk agrees, nodding solemnly.

“I was trying to be  _subtle_!”

“Why bother?” Hunk asks. His Rubik’s cube is almost complete, even though it has loops and curves that should definitely not be there. In fact, Lance can’t say he’s positive it works the same as a Rubik’s cube, but the multitude of colours are starting to line up into neat little … looping, curving rows, so he’s willing to go out on a limb and say Hunk is actually getting somewhere with it. “It’s not as though he’s around to hear us.”

Therein lies the issue, doesn’t it? Keith isn’t around because he’s  _never_  around anymore, except the rare time he’s present for a meal or quite obviously trying not to fall asleep on the very couch they’re all lounging on right now. For someone who spends most of his time holed up in his room, he sure seems pretty fucking exhausted all the time.

And if he isn’t bothering to sleep whenever he’s in his room, what the hell else could he possibly be doing?

“Should we be worried?”

“I dare say I’m pretty effing worried,” Pidge grumbles, tucking her hands into her sleeves and hugging her arms to her chest. “I mean, this isn’t normal Keith behaviour. At least not as far as I’m aware.”

“I absolutely saw him walk down the hall wearing like three sweaters the other day, plus a blanket cape. Who does that?” Hunk’s wonky Rubik’s “loop” hits the coffee table and slides a couple centimetres. All the colours are aligned perfectly in their neat little twisted rows.

Hunk’s right, though. That  _is_  weird. “He never used to have a problem with the temperature in here. Not so  _obviously_ , at least. How is he suddenly  _cold_?"

“So,” Pidge starts, then pauses so dramatically Lance is ready to scream before she continues. She tightens her grip around herself and looks down. “I mean, I hate to do this, because I know Keith is still kind of uncomfortable with that aspect of himself, even if he hasn’t _said_  anything about it outright. But I have to consider -- y’know, I’ve just been suspicious of his behaviour lately so I’ve been kind of trying to track it and then I’ve been hypothesizing--”

Hunk gasps, leaping to his feet with an amount of grace frankly astonishing to Lance. “It’s a Galra thing!”

“Yeah, that seems like the most obvious explanation, I’d say.”

Well, if anything would make Keith act  _this_  strange, it would probably be his Galra genes or something stupid like that. “Great! What the heck is being part Galra doing to him?”

“That is a very good question. One for which I do not have a definitive answer,” Pidge says. “... _yet_.”

 

*

 

    Keith’s head hits Lance’s shoulder. There’s a split second during which he internally reprimands himself for this, insisting that he get up and move, but he’s so damn tired he can’t actually process what’s happening, let alone reason with himself.

    God knows how long he’s been asleep; when he opens his eyes, the lounge is empty save for the warm body he’s leaning against. In fact, the only reason he can fathom for being awake is that he’s still sitting upright in an uncomfortable position and his aching body is sick of it.

    “Keith?” a voice whispers nearby when he makes an anguished noise as he tries to shift around to get out of that position.

    It takes a couple seconds to find the energy to make another sound. “Hm?”

    “You okay?”

    He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He just wants to sleep. Whoever is beside him is tense, but _warm_ in a way he hasn’t felt warmth in months.

    Lance. Lance is beside him.

    Lance is so fucking warm and comfortable, Keith would sing praises about it if he didn’t feel like death walking.

    He doesn’t answer him, but he tucks his head lower against Lance’s chest and twists around a bit to press their sides together better, legs practically in his lap, too far gone to care about what the hell he’s doing. Lance inhales sharply when Keith relaxes against him like that, like this is just a normal thing they do.

    Keith falls asleep again, listening to his heart try to beat out of his ribcage.

 

    Lance doesn’t know what the fuck to  _do._

    This is  _not_ normal.

    The fact that Keith is practically cuddling him aside, he hasn’t had a chance to really observe Keith from up close in a long time, and now that he’s  _right here_ , pretty much in his lap, Keith looks half-dead.

    Pale and ashen, dark bruises around his eyes, cheeks hollow. Even his lips are pale and chapped, and his breathing seems laboured in a way it shouldn’t be for someone who’s been asleep for almost an hour.

    On that note, Lance’s back is starting to get really stiff, but he’s so terrified of leaving Keith alone like this that he doesn’t dare just up and leave. Hunk and Pidge left shortly after Allura, giggling about giving them some privacy as they tumbled over each other and out of the room, leaving Lance red-faced and gaping in their wake.

    He’s been sitting like this every since, afraid of waking Keith (who appears to have not slept in at least a month) and now afraid of hurting him after taking the time to examine his current state.

    Everyone else should really be made aware of this. Keith looks  _ill_. Lance gulps and tentatively places a hand on the back of his head, holding him steady as he turns them so he can lie down with his head on the armrest.

    Keith doesn’t even stir, let alone protest being moved. His head just rests on Lance’s chest, right near his heart, as he lies half on top of him, sickly and much too still and seemingly struggling to breathe.

    Lance doesn’t like this one bit.

    It just so happens that Hunk peeks his head through the doorway to check on them in that moment. “Oh, aww, hey, you guys,” he says, soft and adoring, and Lance can see him reaching for his Punk-phone like he’s planning to snap a picture of them, probably to blackmail Keith with.

    “Hunk,” Lance says, voice strained and eyes filling with tears, and Hunk stops his blackmailing process immediately and rushes to his side, crouching to his level.

    “What is it?”

    “Something’s wrong,” is all Lance can come up with. He doesn’t know exactly how to articulate that something is _off_ about Keith, except maybe to agree with Pidge that maybe he’s got some weird Galra thing going on, or maybe he caught an alien super-flu-bug and refuses to ask for help (because Keith  _would_ ; that’s  _just_ like him).

    Hunk zeroes in on Keith’s face and Lance can tell he sees everything Lance has been fretting over for the last while: the sickly pallor and the gauntness and the visible exhaustion.

    “ _Listen_ ,” he says, and in the silence they listen to the way Keith takes quick, shallow breaths that don’t seem to be doing much for him at all.

    It’s after only a few moments of this that Hunk stands abruptly. “I’ll be back.”

    Lance watches him go, then cranes his neck to look down at Keith. He keeps one hand cradling the back of his head and rests the other on the arm that’s draped over his chest. Keith is wearing an enormously thick hoodie (actually, Lance is pretty sure he’s wearing  _two_ hoodies), but when he slides his hand down to cover Keith’s gloved one, he finds his fingers to be startlingly cold.

    Shiro enters the lounge, face carefully neutral, and moves briskly to Lance’s side. “What’s wrong?” he asks softly, not sparing a glance to the Red paladin, but brushing Keith’s hair from his face to get a better look.

    “I don’t know. Maybe he’s sick. Should we contact Krolia? Use a cryopod?”

    Shiro sighs heavily. “I don’t know, either,” he admits. “Krolia is out for a couple more days, maybe weeks, but we might be able to ask Kolivan if this is normal.”

    Coran’s hand kind of materializes over the back of the couch to rest on Keith’s forehead, and Keith chooses that very opportune moment to jerk awake with a startled noise and roll off of Lance, like he’s just now noticing the room is full of people who are fretting over him.

    He doesn’t get a chance to hit the floor because Shiro catches him, but Keith immediately tries to fend him off, shoving absently at the arms supporting him. “ _Gidoff_ ,” he grumbles, trying to focus bleary eyes on the people around him. “What the hell are you all doing?” he asks, more clearly now.

    “Keith, are you sick?” Pidge asks, tactfully.

    Unsurprisingly, Keith tenses up at the accusation and he bites out, “No. I’m just tired. Leave me alone.”

    “Dude.” Lance, now sitting up, rolls his eyes. How the hell Keith managed to make it to his age with a skull that thick is  _beyond_ Lance, who will acknowledge that he also isn’t the brightest star in the sky, thank you very much. “You look like garbage.”

    “Fuck off, I do not.”

    Coran holds his hands out to Keith in a placating gesture. “I’m sure all is well, number four, but it would bring me peace of mind if you would just let your human doctors in the med bay--”

    “ _Hell no_.”

    “Keith, you’re being unreasonable,” Hunk tries.

    “Leave me alone.” He actually  _does_ push Shiro’s hands away from him, grimacing as he turns on his heel and stalks off towards the doorway. He gets about halfway there before he sways dangerously and goes limp.

 

    “What is it?” Lance asks for the trillionth time in thirty seconds, despite the fact that they have literally  _just_ brought Keith into the med bay and have barely gotten him situated on a bed yet. He’s fidgeting so much that one of the buttons on the pocket of his jacket comes loose as the threads snap.

    “Lance, if you’re going to impede our ability to actually  _do_ anything, we’re going to make you leave,” Pidge threatens.

    Lance nods vigorously and pretends to zip his lips, shuffling back a few centimetres to give the actual qualified people some space. Keith is definitely  _alive_ \-- he’s breathing well enough, and he has a pulse, which are the first things Lance checked for when Keith collapsed on the floor in the paladin lounge (and he definitely wasn’t freaking out and yelling the whole time, no way).

    “Hunk, that goes for you, too,” Pidge says, trying to elbow the yellow paladin out of the way, where he’s hovering over Keith’s head and obsessively attempting to monitor his vitals.

    “Okay, that’s it. Out,” Allura commands, gathering the rest of Team Voltron up with one grand sweeping gesture and forcing them all the leave the med bay with her.

 

    Lance paces, and paces, and paces.

    “You’re going to wear a hole through the floor, and right out into space,” Hunk chastises from where he’s slumped against the wall with his cheek resting on his hand.

    “Well, what else am I gonna do?”

    “Come sit.”

    “I have to  _move._ ”

    Hunk just sighs and stares at the floor. “Are we bad friends?”

    Lance spins on his heel and marches in the other direction, fingers curling into the fabric of his sleeves. “No _. No,_  we were … I don’t know, maybe we are. What if something is really wrong, Hunk? What if he got, like, space pneumonia and never got it treated and now he’s dying?” He almost trips over his own feet. “What if he’s dying?”

    “He’s not dying,” Hunk says, but he doesn’t sound very convinced, himself.


	5. Back Home Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want this fic to be Tender, but Sad, y'know? Here is the soft stuff.

* * *

 

    They’re taking him to a hospital on Earth. That’s the best they can do.

    He doesn’t want to go.

    He doesn’t, but he also can’t find it in himself to protest. What he needs is someone on Earth, someone who is human and  _ understands _ human illnesses, and who has access to the right kinds of equipment and technology, to help him, and he knows that. 

    But he also knows he’s part alien, and that part may affect his physiology, might make it impossible for human treatments to work. 

    He doesn’t want to go, but Lance is clinging to his hand so tightly he worries his fingers might break, and he can’t disappoint Lance, he  _ can’t. _ This --  _ whatever _ kind of relationship they’ve developed, tentative as it is, he  _ wants  _ this. Hurting Lance will ruin it. Dying because he was too afraid to fix himself will prevent it from ever evolving into something better. He doesn’t want to lose the soft simplicity of just existing around Lance.

    He’s tucked up under a mountain of blankets in the med bay, wishing he could just hide in his own room, in his own bed. Half of team Voltron is in here with him, solemnity radiating from them so strongly it’s making him somehow  _ more _ weary.

    Lance is staring numbly at the wall above his head, so obviously grinding his teeth that Keith has half a mind to reach up and smooth a hand over his cheek just to make him relax. That’s almost  _ too _ intimate, though, for the careful friendship they’ve built up recently, and he’s too tired to lift his arm so high anyway. 

    Instead, he settles for a short-lived attempt at squeezing the hand wrapped so fiercely around his own. Lance glances down at him, jaw relaxing minutely, and Keith offers him a tired, hopefully reassuring, smile. 

  
  


*

  
  


    “Welp, everything’s quiet out there in the big, wide universe,” Lance announces as he enters Keith’s room, hands on his hips. He hadn’t bothered to change into his stiff and uncomfortable Garrison uniform (much to the chagrin of half the people in attendance at their meeting, Shiro included), in favour of his best pair of worn jeans and a much newer baseball tee. It’s warm as balls in this room, and he expected as much, so his favourite jacket just ends up draped over the back of the chair that he scoots over to the side of Keith’s bed.

    He looks like he’s just waking up. Colour Lance surprised (not). Three days of this and he’s pretty accustomed to Keith’s newer behaviours.

    “Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” he asks, softer than before.

    Keith only hums and shakes his head. “Been waiting for you to come back with news for me.”

    “Mm, yeah?” He reaches out for Keith’s shoulder, but stops himself halfway and settles for gripping the bed rail instead. It isn’t his place to put his hands all over Keith, not when he’s barely with it, not when he’s vulnerable. It isn’t fair of him to try to take what he wants now, of all times. “I told you, we can set up the video feed if you want to join us.”

    “No,” Keith says, adamantly, like he has every time Lance offers.

    This time, he refuses to just accept that. “Well, why not? We feel terrible leaving you out of the loop down here.”

    Keith’s gaze settles on the wall beyond Lance’s shoulder and for a moment, he’s afraid he’s pissed Keith off and won’t get an answer, but then he just sighs and adjusts the blankets around himself with a slow, unsteady movement. “It works both ways. They’re just going to stare at me. I look like garbage.”

    This has Lance taken aback, but he attempts to recollect himself and shakes his head. “No, no, you don’t, you’re p-- you’re shivering,” he observes, interrupting himself, and he’d honestly have to be blind not to see it.

    Not that Keith being cold is anything  _ new _ , just that, between the temperature in his Garrison hospital room being cranked up, and the fact that he’s bundled under no less that three comforters and at least one fleece blanket, he  _ shouldn’t _ still be cold. The tremors travel up and down the heap of fabric on the bed in quick succession. 

    “...No I’m not,” Keith mumbles, petulant, like there’s any point trying to deny it. 

    Lance uncurls his fingers from around the warm metal rail and his hand delves under the covers, coming back with Keith’s own gripped in it. As he expected, his fingertips feel like ice.  _ How _ Keith is cold is beyond him -- he isn’t a doctor, and he definitely couldn’t tell anyone the first thing about Galra-human biology. He’s completely out of his depth, here.

    Within seconds, the shivering has reached a point they look more like full-body convulsions, and Keith’s cold hand twitches feebly in his grip. “Yeah, fine. It’s freezing in here,” he says through chattering teeth.

    Lance rubs his hand between both of his own to warm it. “Keith,” he starts, softly, as though he’s attempting to calm a wild animal, “it’s not.”

    “ _ It’s _ … I’m  _ cold _ ,” Keith says, in a way that implies he expects Lance to know what he’s talking about. 

    “I know,” he tries, almost apologetically. “What can I do?”

    Keith’s fingers curl around his wrist and squeeze, and he looks up at Lance with eyes that are wide and agonized. “I don’t kn-- you …. you’re  _ warm _ .”

    When Lance doesn’t respond, he prompts, “Just keep holding--” Lance can  _ hear _ his teeth chatter as another bout of tremors comes over him. “I’m cold  _ everywhere _ ,” Keith whimpers --  _ whimpers _ \-- and Lance’s heart shatters into a million pieces.

    This is so unlike him, so different from the Keith he’s spent months and months living in space with, getting to know, such a far cry from the hotheaded (if mildly insecure) leader of Voltron that Lance has come to revere him as.

    This is a part of Keith that would probably never see the light of day under better circumstances, but Lance can only imagine that fatigue and discomfort and illness have rendered his handle on himself a little loose.

    But when his heart breaks, so does his resolve to hold Keith at arm’s length (physically and emotionally), for both their sakes. He stands, eases one edge of the covers up and starts to slide himself under them. Keith’s efforts to make space for him are fruitless when he’s this weak, his elbow giving out under him when he tries to lift himself up to shimmy backwards, so Lance very gently cups a hand under his shoulder and his hip and helps him shift over to the opposite edge of a bed much too small for two people. 

    The temperature difference under the blankets, as opposed to out in the open air of the room, is nearly undetectable. Uncomfortably warm in any case, but abnormally cool considering the fact that Keith has been nestled under here for several consecutive hours, now. His body simply isn’t generating enough heat to warm the space around him, let alone his own extremities. 

    Lance frowns as he settles himself down on his right side, facing Keith, who pushes forward into the warmth of his chest the moment Lance’s head makes contact with the pillow. Keith’s already wearing a hoodie, and for the sake of his sanity, Lance pulls the hood up over his head to help him retain some warmth. He can feel the tiny convulsions running through Keith’s body now, all pressed up against his legs and abdomen, and flings an arm over him to pull him in closer, cupping the back of his head as he does so.

    It’s hard for him to think of Keith as  _ fragile _ , of all things, and he knows for a fact that Keith from two months ago would have likely decked him for even implying as much, so he keeps his mouth shut now just in case Keith manages to summon enough strength to be pissed at him for it. Instead of commenting on how frail and sickly he’s become right under their noses, he grabs both of Keith’s wrists, bringing his hands together by his mouth and breathing out hot air onto them. He spends several long seconds awkwardly attempting to rub the warmth into his fingers with his one free hand, then repeats the process, much the way one would try to keep their own hands warm in winter.

    Except that it  _ isn’t _ winter, and it isn’t his hands that feel like ice. “Is that better?” he asks, and when there’s no response his heart seizes. But then there’s a faint exhale against his collarbone, and he deflates, sighing heavily with relief. He wishes he could say he doesn’t know why he’s so deeply concerned for Keith’s well-being. He wishes he could say it’s just because they’re friends, maybe best friends (maybe not in the way he and Hunk and are ‘besties’, or he and Pidge are ‘bros’, but just  _ best friends _ , because he needn’t settle for only one of those). 

    But he does know, and the circumstances are like a wildfire lit just to destroy everything Lance could possibly want or have.

    Would he have told Keith how much he loves him if this hadn’t happened? Would he have told him that he adores the way he laughs and the way he looks when he’s grumpy and the way his body moves when he fights? That he’s enraptured by the way he sleeps, all curled in on himself, and by the way he treats Lance as an equal, but more importantly as a friend?

    That he can’t imagine life without Keith by his side, competing with him over stupid things like who can collect the most scaultrite pieces and who can eat the most hot peppers and how many training simulations they can beat in an hour?

    If the situation was different, would he tell Keith that he can’t live without him?

 

    With Keith sound asleep in his arms and his heart aching to hold him close like this forever, he wonders if he might find the courage to tell him anyway.

 

*

 

    Krolia comes tearing into the hospital wing of the Garrison less than two hours later, Kosmo bounding along at her heels and wagging his tail like he’s the happiest creature in the universe. Lance has to physically restrain him from leaping onto the bed and disturbing Keith, and he can only imagine that Kosmo senses his intent because he relents immediately and takes up a sentry position by the foot of the bed.

    Krolia, meanwhile, is sniffing the air curiously as she lingers in the doorway.

    “It reeks of cold-drop in here,” she announces, zeroing in on Lance curled around Keith. “Is that why he’s here? You let him have a  _ drop _ ?”

    “I’m going to be honest, I have no clue what that means.” Lance does  _ not _ cower under her intense gaze,  _ thank you very much. _

    Fortunately, the rest of Team Voltron is close behind her, filing into the room as she stalks over to the bed to get a better look at Keith (or maybe just to tower over Lance). “Aren’t you supposed to be his pack?” Krolia asks, and she doesn’t sound so much  _ accusing _ as she does genuinely uncertain. Her fingers curl under Keith’s chin and his face twists in discomfort as he’s made to shift away from Lance. 

    “Um, I don’t--” Lance squeaks, but Coran gasps behind him.

    “Oh, I hadn’t realized number four …  _ oh _ , of course. Who else would he bond with?” Coran actually  _ laughs  _ quietly, then excuses himself. “Now, surely that can’t be  _ all  _ that’s wrong with him, but I suspect some proper pack behaviour would help tremendously, wouldn’t it?”

    “Of course it would.” Krolia traces a fingertip over the curve of Keith’s eyebrow, but he doesn’t relax again until she lets go and he tucks his head under Lance’s chin again, still sound asleep. 

    “I’m … sorry. Could you explain, for the humans in the room?” Shiro asks. 

    “Do humans not form packs?”

    “Er, not really,” Pidge offers. “I mean, we have family units, which are usually just blood-relations, but I don’t think that’s quite what you mean.”

    “Oh.” Krolia glances around for a seat, then nabs the chair with Lance’s jacket draped over the back and settles in. “I see. Where to begin? Kolivan might be better at providing an explanation here--”

    “I can promise you he is not,” Hunk says, and Lance knows he’s recalling the aggravating process of trying to get  _ any _ interesting information out of Kolivan. “Sorry,” he adds, meekly, upon realizing he interrupted.

    “That’s alright. Well, Galra form packs similar to your family units, which I do have some knowledge of from my time on Earth. But it certainly isn’t limited to shared blood and, in fact, may not involve that at all.” She makes quick work of explaining the process of forming a pack-bond with other Galra, which for the most part sounds like just being really close friends with several people and then all having a mutual understanding that a pack has been formed.

    The whole thing involves a  _ whole lot _ of physical affection.

    “If the needs of any member of a pack aren’t being met, they’ll have a cold-drop, which will make them ill until whatever’s missing has been adequately fulfilled, or in extreme cases, their needs are not fulfilled at all and they die.”

    At this, Hunk lets out a little gasp, then claps a hand over his mouth. 

    “Of course, in most cases, members of the pack can immediately detect when someone is in need of something, or if they are about to have a drop, and will fix the issue before anything can come of it.”

    “Why wasn’t any of this information available in any data archives I’ve read about the Galra?” Pidge demands.

    It’s Coran who answers her. “Well, for Galra and most Alteans, it is common knowledge, but for the information to spread to any other species is dangerous.”

    “How so?” asks Shiro.

    “It can be -- and has been, in the past -- used to torture Galra prisoners. Imprisoning multiple members of one pack in close quarters, but separated by, say, glass, and allowing one or more to have a cold-drop, is agony for all involved. One party is dying a very slow and painful death, and the other is so desperate to get to them and protect them that they will do  _ anything _ to be reunited.”

    “Like give up valuable information?” Lance muses, and while he can recognize that it would be an  _ efficient _ means of obtaining information, he has enough of a soul in his body to know that it’s just cruel and evil.

    “So, is that all that’s wrong with Keith?”

    Krolia looks deeply troubled as she shakes her head. “No, I can smell illness about him even under the drop. He needs medicine, but not the kind the Galra can provide, or at least not for any kind of illness I’ve ever known.”

    “So we need to wait for his blood work results to come back anyway.” Allura sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “I wish I could know what it was so I could just fix it myself.”

    “What do we do about the … drop thing?” 

    “Exactly what you’re already doing, Lance,” Krolia inclines her head towards him. “He hasn’t been getting enough physical contact and it made him sick.”

    “And that’ll make him warm again, too? Dude’s like an ice cube lately.”

    “Yes, hence the term ‘cold-drop’. He  _ should _ be getting attention from his whole pack, and he  _ should  _ be in a nest, but whatever works for you will undo some of the damage. And while I’m at it, get that wretched thing off of him.”

    “What, the hoodie?”

    “The -- yes, that thing.”

    “But it’s helping keep him warm.”

    “I’m sure it is, but with how far gone he is, skin-on-skin contact would be ideal.”

    “Oh.” Lance turns red to the tips of his ears even though he shouldn’t have a legitimate reason to be embarrassed. After all, he’s already cuddling Keith in front of their whole team. 

    “Krolia,” Shiro says, while Lance begins wrangling the sweater off of Keith, “could you show us how to make a nest?”

  
  


    Keith wakes up to a kind of warmth he swears he hasn’t felt in  _ years _ , maybe his whole  _ life _ . It’s like being wrapped up in the sun and the clouds and the stars and like someone poured liquid happiness right into his heart. He presses further into it, curling his fingers in the nearest piece of fabric in an attempt to draw it  _ closer _ , so he can drink in more happiness.

    It almost drowns out the ache in his body and the weakness in his limbs.

    Fingernails scrape across his scalp and drag through his hair. He can hear himself make a tiny, content noise, but he can’t be bothered to open his eyes.

    Whatever it is that’s happening to him, it feels  _ safe _ , and then he remembers falling asleep in Lance’s arms and the  _ relief _ he felt just being that close to him. No wonder it feels safe. It’s  _ Lance. _

    He inhales deeply and the fingers card through his hair again. 

    Someone else’s arm stretches over his back; he tenses so fast it actually makes his shoulders hurt more, eyes flying open. At first he only registers the pale blue fabric of Lance’s shirt, but then beyond that a familiar shock of white hair, and a little further down he can see Pidge curled around her Punk-phone. Something draped across his legs shifts as she glances up at him and smiles. Oh. That would be one of Pidge’s legs, hooked around his where she’s hiked his pant leg up halfway to his knee. Warmth radiates from where their skin touches. 

    In fact, warmth radiates from lots of places, like where Shiro’s arm is pressed against his, and whatever weight is bearing down on his lower back, and he thinks maybe his left shoulder, and all around his head where Lance is all but massaging his skull, and across his whole front, since he’s lying pretty much right on top of Lance. 

    A sound he's definitely never made before rumbles through his chest, and he's too far out of his head to register it, but that doesn't stop everyone else in the room from reacting. After a brief pause in which Keith’s purring is the only sound in the room, Lance makes a noise like he's been punched in the gut, fingers tightening in Keith's hair. 

    “Holy shit,” Pidge says, at the same time Hunk coos and the hand on his back starts rubbing little circles. 

    “Feels nice,” Keith mumbles, cheek still smooshed against Lance's chest. The state of euphoria he's in will be his only valid defense if anyone makes fun of him later, because he's never been bold enough to ask for affection before and he's not about to start now, but he holds out his hand and Pidge takes it and squeezes, smiling. 

    “You're purring,” she whispers, leaning in closer to him like it's some kind of secret. 

    Keith nods. “I'm purring,” he says, not actually registering the words. The sound actually grows louder, if anything, as Lance's fingers rake through his hair again. “Weird.” And then his eyes slip shut again and he's out cold.


End file.
